Fresh from our trip to NOLA, we’ve posted the initial foray into the A.D. experience. It’s part I of the prologue, titled “In The Beginning…”, documenting Hurricane Katrina as it builds from a tropical storm in the Bahamas and moves inexorably toward New Orleans. Check it out over at SMITH.

I hope to post the second part of the prologue in a couple of weeks, with chapter 1 — and the introduction of our five central characters — to follow within a month.

My new project, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, debuts on SMITH Magazine this week (which is also Smith’s one-year anniversary). Following (belatedly) in the footsteps of Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman’s critically acclaimed Shooting War, A.D. is about Hurricane Katrina and its effects on the lives of five real New Orleans residents. A.D. will also deal with the effect of the storm on other regions, such as Biloxi, in the parts of the project dealing with my personal experiences as a Red Cross volunteer. This is my most research-heavy project ever, and is going to be a major focus of my time for the next six months (at least). I plan on putting up a new chapter at least once a month, and hopefully more often than that. And it’ll all be free for viewing at SMITH.